Invulnerable
by gimmeabreakxD
Summary: Because rejection does things to people. "Goddess bless you, stars above. You're pretty to look at, but not good for much else."
1. I

**Invulnerable**

I

* * *

"_Never love a wild thing. If you let yourself love a wild thing, you'll end up looking at the sky." _

― Truman Capote_, Breakfast at Tiffany's_

* * *

"Why do you keep doing that?"

"Doing what?"

"Pretending you never get hurt."

"Who says I'm pretending?"

* * *

Severe. Even unspoken, the word invokes vestigial admiration in him. A hiss first, a fricative next, then a soft rustling r, a susurration of the mouth: a snake twisted into word, serpentine, caught in letter-bars. Slender as a climbing vine. Drop by drop, it takes shape in his mind: a long meandering rope, dark green, striped, tubed and lustrous. A vertical pupil, a forked tongue flicking, tasting the air. The sound of scissors slicing through crimpled ringlets: snip, snip.

You're the expert, she says, frowning at her inverted reflection who frowns back at her. You decide.

That's what she reminds him of, the word severe. Just the word, of course, not the definition, just the shell, a fruit with its flesh carved out; the leftover rind. He glances at her mirror-twin: still staring at herself, at the jumbled mess she calls hair, at the errant strands pricked up, the split ends, suggestive of piles upon piles of hay. The Holstein-print hat is missing; she knows how much he hates it. She's murmuring to herself with a mouth that barely moves, he catches snippets, brief snatches: chin-length—no, too short; past the shoulders, maybe? Or a trim, yeah, sounds good, nothing too radical, he can do that, no problem.

He stands behind her, straining to keep his face impassive; vulnerability becomes a problem in a place like this, where every wall is plastered with a mirror, where someone in front of you can still shoot you a glimpse without even turning around. Every time a look bounces, it gets sharper, until it's sharp enough to dart right through whitewashed pretenses, through wandering thoughts. It works both ways, true, but there's a reason why people don't grow eyes at the backs of their heads.

Do you think cutting it short would do me any good? she asks.

Eh, he says.

The shell-word severe personified, that's her. It matches her, complements her. It folds itself around her and brands its name into her arm: severe, my darling, you are severe, I hereby christen you so. Like a tattoo. Like a price tag, like an inmate number. A prisoner of words.

Light from outside filters in through the windowpanes, transparent shafts speckled with dust, liquid sunlight stained yellow. It smears umber squares on the floor, picks out falcate locks of hair on the parquet, black and blonde and brown, a bit of red here and there, probably his own. He would sweep again, later, when he's alone.

Your hair, he says, is a hot mess. How can anything be this ugly?

He runs his fingers through it, through her hair, runs them with a sodden relish he takes care not to show, and makes himself focus on the dryness of the strands, stiff as a broom, the brittleness of them, the faded coloring. She hasn't combed it yet; it's knotted and snarled and a little greasy, a little dampened with sweat.

Sighing, he grabs a brush and untangles her hair, gently, without yanking, without pulling; he's excellent at what he does, he takes pride in it, his reputation is at stake. His ego, too.

It's too quiet. Silence is everywhere: wedged in corners, daubed on walls, dripping to the floor and soaking his shoes. Trapped in a reflected world behind the mirror, leaving handprints on the other side, mouth open: screaming without a sound. If he takes a hammer to one of those, will the noise rush out?

She asks, You think I'm ugly?

Their eyes meet. Nothing but a fleeting glance, a momentary contact, scalding, almost; it's gone in a moment, it evaporates with their breaths, and he only remembers the color blue, as an afterimage hovering at the peripheries. The washed kind of blue, world-weary, scrubbed over and over, more gray than blue. He grunts in reply.

Grunts are primitive, but yes is a foul word: too short, too simple, not the elegant kind; it's the sort of simple that brings to mind crossed eyes and glistening threads of naked saliva, pockets of black under the eyes, a greasy nose. Pockmarked cheeks, the stale odor of an unwashed human body. The disgusting kind of simple.

And yet, no matter how foul yes is, no hurts more.

He wraps the cape around her shoulders. It covers her up to the forearms, falls down to her knees; he secures it with a clip at the back of her neck. Now she's a crumpled umbrella with a head stuck on top and calves peeking out at the bottom, booted feet swinging.

Well, she says. Can't you make me pretty?

I'm the best there is, darling, but I'm not a miracle worker.

So you can't.

He snorts at this. Not that I can't do it, he says, annoyed. I only choose not to.

You confuse me sometimes.

Part of the charm, princess. He swivels her chair so she's turned away from the mirror. Up, he says, tapping her on the shoulder. To the wash station.

She obeys without a word; she stands up and heads to the washbasin, sits at the vinyl-upholstered chair. She leans backward into the sink, her hair a shimmering tapestry of sun-bleached straw yellow, pooling into the white enamel. Golden crescents frayed at the tips. As he bends over her head, their eyes meet again; this time it's she who looks away. This time he's sure: blue-gray. Not as blue as they used to be, not as comely as they once were. She clears her throat.

Floral, please, she says.

Why not citrus?

Preferences, guy. Ever heard of 'em?

He screws the tap on. Water rushes out, white foaming water, cold and clean and drip, drip, dripping. It soaks into her hair, her tapestry of hair hanging down, and darkens it to a dull light brown, soggy clumps with droplets trickling off the ends.

He turns the tap off; there's silence, again. He squeezes the shampoo bottle and the contents pour out. The scent of flowers curls up from the sink, seeps into his clothes, into his nose.

Allen, she says, so softly he almost misses it.

I'm working.

Are you still mad at me?

A corner of his mouth twists up; it tastes bitter on his tongue, probably looks bitter, too. Because you're a legendary idiot? he says. Hah. No, I pity you.

She closes her eyes and doesn't say a thing. Her eyeballs move behind the eyelids; he sees the skin rippling. He works the shampoo into a lather, massages it into her hair, taking pains to be gentle when what he wants is to coil the wet tapestry around his fist and yank it back as hard as he can and listen to her cry out in pain and stare into her eyes and—

…Allen?

She blinks her eyes open, her blue-gray eyes. They focus on him, upside-down, her face upturned, the chin above and the forehead below.

I'm working, he says again.

I'm sorry. I really am.

Fingers, hair, fingers, hair. He's used to this; it's almost mechanical. Every procedure is ingrained into his mind, into his hands, that he's able to shut his thoughts off and let his hands do the work. He can almost ignore her, occupied like this. Almost. If only she would close her eyes and stop watching him: Even he gets tired of attention sometimes. He feels her scalp on his fingertips. How come something as common as this becomes just about intimate all of a sudden? He's washing her hair, damn it, he's not touching her because he wants to, not because he feels the need to. It's not intimate. Far from it, too far.

He grunts again, an ambiguous sound.

She frowns. From where he stands, it seems like a smile, because that's what smiles are: inverted frowns. She says, It's not that I don't like you—

I'm working, princess, so kindly shut up.

She clamps her mouth closed. Everything is suffused in silence, wreathed in a breathless hush; even as he works, nothing produces a sound. No ragged staccato of labored breathing, no swishing of wet hair; he doesn't even hear his own thoughts: he imagines them as fractured phantoms with zippers as mouths, faceless thoughts with no eyes and no bodies.

The windows seem to eye them, giggling, if windows could giggle: Look at those humans, they would say. How pathetic. Look at that beautiful man, that tortured man who thinks he's above getting hurt. Way to give him a wake-up call.

Her stomach rises and falls, he observes it with furtive glances thrown her way, she doesn't notice a thing: Keep breathing, darling. Breathe for both of us.

The washing is done; he rinses the suds off.

What am I to you, he thinks, just a pair of hands on your head, washing your hair? He will never admit it, not even to himself—especially not to himself—but the thought stings a bit.

Allen, she says.

Are you deaf or stupid? There's no cure for either.

He dries her hair, towels it off with care. There's a mirror on the opposite side of the room. In it, where everything is echoed and flipped without permission, her head is bowed, her hair unruly, swathed with the off-white towel he rubs back and forth; he catches a fleeting expression on her face: her eyes are closed again, she's hurt, his words have found their mark and cracked it, like an egg, like a drinking glass dropped on the floor. He's glad, in a morbid way.

Not so nice, isn't it, he thinks, when you're on the receiving end of something painful? Well, poor you. Go ahead and cry. I'm ready to laugh.

The pain that showed on her face is gone now, replaced by something smooth and placid, blank to the point of artificial: he knows fake when he sees it. Emotions are impossible to fake, unless you truly believe in your own lies, unless you get entangled with the very threads you spin, but by then you've become a victim as well as the accused, trapped in a hopeless blunder, forever falling. Facial expressions, though, are another thing.

Or perhaps she's simply fallen asleep.

He does laugh, but still she doesn't cry.

* * *

He wakes up to a moldy half-moon cradled by clouds that glow silver-gray in the sky. Glorified cigarette smoke, blown from heaven's puckered lips, sprayed with a fixative to keep them in place. A thin, white cylinder propped between the Goddess' first two fingers: inhale, pause, exhale. Stars are out, not many of them tonight. Nosy things, those heavenly bodies, always looking down, always watching; condescending, even; they remind him of the smell of hair bleach. Hydrogen peroxide, sprinkled on the clouds: lighten up, nimbus.

The windowsill is rough under his palms; his breath fogs the glass. He starts counting the stars. An old pastime that's become a habit, charming in its futility; he does it because he knows there's no end to it, it's impossible, he would have stopped long ago otherwise. A task he can begin but never finish. It reminds him he's still human, after all, that there are things he can't do, however he tries.

One, two, three, four.

Star light, star bright, he says. Even I get hurt. Why couldn't you?

But what can stars do? Peel themselves off from the sky, descend from above, through layers and layers of air, of dust, take him by the hand, kiss the wound and make it better? Hah. There, there, Allen, dear. Don't cry. Everything will be all right. Clasp your hands together, like this, close your eyes and make a wish.

He thinks, Goddess bless you, stars above. You're pretty to look at, but not good for much else.

On an impulse he opens the window, slides it up so the chilly evening air seeps in. He welcomes this, the cold; it comes in and carries the scent of leaves, of dew, of trees. No hair bleach here, in the middle of the night, when people are curled under blankets, stuck in the world of dreams. Tick-tock, the clock says, thumbing the dark away: Go to sleep, Allen, you bastard of bastards. Crickets chirp, a rhythmical grating song; or is it just one cricket he hears, hidden in the grass somewhere nearby? He waits for an owl to hoot; nothing comes.

His eyes feel as if they're covered in sand, powder-fine but grainy, like the shell of a raw egg pounded to dust. Not enough sleep, or too much of it. Both, perhaps? He's a cast-off, now: a reject, a yard-sale item. A stuffed bear with a missing eye, a moth-eaten fur coat. A paperback on the shelf, taken down, its spine tentatively fingered, its cover appraised, ultimately wedged back among smutty novels, skipped for a better title.

Who's the better title, then? She insists there's no one else. We have to think this through, she said. That's all there is to it.

So he thinks it through, every night, sometimes all night, with only the lightening sky as his companion: sagacity itself, rolled out overhead, privy to his innermost conflicts. There would be a moon, some evenings, a sliver or half, silent and knowing. He doesn't track lunar cycles; it's always a treat to gaze out and spot a full moon: You've grown fat, he'd say to it.

Rejection does things to people.

Five. Six, seven, eight. No, he's counted that one already. Start over.

Red stars, blue stars, yellow, white. Twinkling as if nothing else matters, sky-glitter in rainbow colors. Look at us, they're saying. Stare at us. Behold our beauty, our magnificence; without us your skies are dead.

Never mind that the stars he stares at now have long been dead themselves.

Nevertheless, he makes a wish. He doesn't clasp his hands together, no way, but he tilts his face up and takes a deep breath and sends a mumbling thought skyward. How emasculating, how degrading, that someone like him should be reduced to an emotional wreck, stooping so low as to make demands of celestial objects. If only they could see him now; if only Rio could watch as his hands tighten on the windowsill, gasp as splinters dig into his palms.

She would ask after the ring he doesn't wear anymore.

Pondering these things make him feel like a dog: he's being yanked around on a leash by something—someone?—he can't quite keep up with, someone whose back is a habitual sight, whose front remains ever unknown, the dark side of the moon. Going around in circles, a dog chasing its own tail. Plot twist: the dog is a cat. Hah, how gloriously his mind works, groggy with sleep-dregs as it is.

I wish, he thinks, she could feel what I feel. I wish she'd cry every night, die every day only to live again at dusk, that stupid hillbilly.

How cheesy: I gave you my heart on a silver platter, Rio, and you ate it. Want some gravy with that?

He laughs, snorts like a pig, doubles over with his hands clutching at his sides. He's shaking with mirth; oh Goddess, how delightful it is to laugh at something so pointless. An ability people shed, he figures, as childhood falls away from beneath them, sometimes visiting at night, when you open your window and it finds you awake and contemplating. So innocence comes to us, not the other way round.

What he needs is a needle and some thread to sew his eyes shut. A razor blade, too, to slit the stitches come morning, but razor blades are a grim portent: there are many uses for one that doesn't involve shaving.

He stops laughing, straightens up, wipes away tears at the corners of his eyes.

Three wishes, then: two wishes too many. And why not? Go ahead and share the pain. If one despairs, another might as well. Go forth and multiply like the mangy rats you are.

Oh, boohoo, boohoo. So you went ahead and got your heart broken. You poor, poor thing. You deserve all the tears in the world, let the moon cry for you, let the heavens howl in your stead, let the oceans boil and the mountains crumble; none can understand the pain you feel, you're the first one to feel this way, none can sympathize, who can comfort your poor, poor soul? Boohoo, boohoo.

What a big baby he is. A whiner, a hedonistic cretin with shadow-saddled eyes and mussed hair, with a gilded mirror where his heart ought to be. He doesn't exist during daytime, this man; he comes out only after the sun has set, when no one's looking, when all eyes are darting back and forth behind closed eyelids. During mornings, when the same eyes linger on his face, on his clothes, he becomes Allen again, stylist extraordinaire, the man who would one day be perfect or die trying. Perfection is, after all, subjective.

One, two, three. Four and five and six.

He climbs back into his bed with stars in his thoughts.

* * *

**Disclaimer:** I own a pair of pants that were freshly laundered two weeks ago. I also own a washing machine that worked fine until two weeks ago. Harvest Moon? No, I don't own that.

* * *

_**a/n:**_

_Guys. GUYS. My monitor is being weird right now. It turns cyan and magenta and yellow every minute, without warning. Like it's drunk or something. It's spooky. It's distracting. It's _fabulous_. It's like a rainbow, only it's not, because it's an old LCD monitor. Why am I excited by this?_

_I don't even know why I put this in the Author's Note._

_Also, I don't know whether this thing's going to remain a oneshot or what._

_Thanks for reading!_


	2. II

**Invulnerable**

II

* * *

"_Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it's time for them to be hurt."_

_― _Haruki Murakami_, Norwegian Wood_

* * *

"You're arrogant, self-centered, sexist, vain. And incredibly annoying."

"And yet you love me."

"And yet I love you."

"Who can blame you?"

* * *

Guilt is a balding creature that shuffles on webbed feet, padding along one side of your bed, watching.

It has hairless forearms like stockinged legs with seams up the backs, gnarled hands attached at the ends, clawed fingers: twenty, ten on each hand, all the better to strangle you with. ("Grandma, what numerous fingers you have!") Those hands squeeze your neck until your heart gives up, until you gasp and turn your emotions inside out so the guts are outside and the skin is inside, until you drop on all fours with your arms outstretched, scrambling for the merest scrap of redemption.

She thinks she hears it on moonless nights, scratching at the walls, whispering in a deathless voice of stringy gray: Blame yourself, love, it's your fault. Sometimes, when she's tired and in no mood for a bout of self-depreciation, she would turn from the wall, throw her arms over her head, clench her jaw, and paint a picture of sunrise on the black canvas behind her eyes. Pinkish gray on the eastern sky, deepening, brightening to salmon, to copper, to orange, a garish explosion of color staining the clouds, spilling on the mountains. If the sun could rise again, so could she.

On rarer occasions, when her thoughts start growing their own thoughts, when everything's tangled in her mind and the voices in it aren't just hers anymore, she would unfurl the whispers, square by square, like a roll of toilet paper rationed out, and talk to the tonsured monster crouched in the cylindrical core: Is it really my fault? And it would say: Yes.

Today guilt lurks in the cracks between the floorboards, pressing one eye against the gaps. A one-eyed leer by her crossed ankles.

Allen is sitting across from her, tapping his fingers on the tabletop. He raises four fingers, brings them down on the checked tablecloth, one by one: pinkie first, ring finger next, and so on, in rapid succession, the knuckles undulating. The thumb stays still, extended outwards, lying on its side. Blunt thumps on the polyester: rap-rap-rap-rap.

She likes watching his hands. They're clean hands, pampered, pale and long-fingered, daintier than hers will ever be. Buttery, to some extent, and pinkish around the nails. They reek of talcum powder and hair conditioner: the pungent sort of fragrant, coming from tendrils of chalky buildup gathered in the pores, softened by sunlight. Manicured to the last cuticle, those nails, on slender fingers with glossy tips, with rosy-mottled palms.

No rings on them.

I didn't sleep well last night, she says.

His eyes flick up, blue-white behind the lenses, then down; she thinks he's sneering, but he's trying not to. His mouth twitches.

Poor you, he says.

He twirls his fork and pasta strands coil around the tines, a tight wad of green worms; he shoves it in his mouth. The way he chews, it must move around a lot: left molars, right molars, chew fifteen times, swallow. Up, down, his Adam's apple bobs. The muscles in his jaw bulge and shift, his chin dipping, rising.

She pushes crumbled curry around on her bowl. Appetite has left her, spread its wings and flown away, waving as it rode the winds; perhaps by now some bird watcher has spotted it through a pair of binoculars and said, What an odd bird. Even the thought of lifting the spoon to her mouth seems too difficult. Sometimes it's a herculean task, eating: either you're hungry or you're not. Right now, she's not. She gnaws on the inside of her cheek; she thinks she tastes the coppery tang of blood. It does nothing for her enthusiasm.

Eat, he says. I'm paying.

You don't have to.

I don't like repeating myself.

A shrug is what she gives him. It's warm in here, and a thin film of sweat gathers on her forehead; the heat presses down on her shoulders, forcing her to slouch. There are ceiling fans overhead, stirring the dust that hovers in mid-air, stirring the soupy air around as though it's not air, but water, simmering water. Broth, almost. They're cooking us in our own breaths, she thinks. Any more heat and we're done. Boiled people: makes twelve to fourteen servings. Cut us into squares and serve us with grated parsley.

How gruesome, thinking of cannibalism while eating curry. She's disgusted with herself.

We can't let things go on like this, she says.

Like what?

Allen, please. Let's talk.

What for? I proposed, you said no. He smiles; it's the kind of smile that hardens the eyes and warps the mouth, the kind that sends icy spiders creeping down your back, trooping into your stomach. Things like that don't leave much room for talking, he says.

I didn't say no. I said maybe we should hold it off for a bit.

He leans an elbow on the table, props his chin on the upturned palm. Pieces of red hair fall on his eyes and around his glasses. Outside the sky lies flat, sleepy-eyed and hollow, a silver-blue sheet swathed over the mountains, smeared across with clouds like bird droppings. He's staring at them, at the bird-dropping clouds. She wonders what he's thinking about. The bridge of his nose drops down from his forehead in an unbroken diagonal line, a pure slant that ends with a sharp curve. His fingers go rap-rap-rap-rap.

People's profiles are a familiar view to those shunted away to the sidelines, or to those trapped indoors, whose faces are pressed up against the windowpanes. She's one of those people, she would know how it is; the sides of noses, the swells of cheeks, the vast expanses of bland skin between the mouth and the ear. Mostly, though, the view is from behind, at the end of the line: the backs of heads, freckled napes, hair cropped or worn loose or braided, pink ears sticking out.

That's what he expects of her: to stay a step behind, to follow him to hell and back, ignored and compliant, eyes trained to the back of his head. Or so she thinks.

The ring, she says. Where—

I have it. I'm not giving it back.

I don't want to take it back.

Good.

Stop looking at the sky, she wants to say. The sky doesn't love you. The sky isn't feeling sorry that it hurt you. The sky doesn't feel like crying right now, it doesn't need your attention. The sky is mute and doesn't have anything to say.

She uncrosses and recrosses her ankles under the chair. His back is to the door; he doesn't see the curlicued brass doorknob, nor the laminated floor moldings, nor Rod walking past with a leash in his hand, nor Tina hurtling down the road, leaving a streak of orange in her wake; nor the other figures from the waist up: blurry moon-faces that pass by and walk away without a glance, strangers with names attached to their voices, stapled at the corners like paper handouts.

The food on her bowl resembles an entropy-riddled garden: patches of green lying on a brown bed, all crumbled up and sprinkled, piled in the middle, like a compost heap. Rivulets of clay-colored broth running down the sides, miniature rivers of mud, glistening with a faint rainbow sheen swirling on the surface. Viewed at the right angle, the arrangement is suggestive of topsoil, tilled and watered. Doesn't smell like it, thank Goddess for small mercies.

Rio, he says, still gazing out the window.

Yes?

Eat.

The first time she saw him, she mistook him for a woman. It must be the hair, the chatoyant eyes with the outer corners turned up, the flippant bow of the mouth, the cord wrapped around his wrist. Possibly the slender build, or the bisque-doll skin, or simply the air of haughty sophistication he exudes without effort. Observing him now, she realizes what a silly mistake it was: the line of his jaw is too clean, too strong, too angular; the set of his shoulders too virile.

Masculine. Metrosexual. Semi-mellifluous, ultramodern?

What reminds her of him the most is red. Not red as a color; red as a taste, a sharp jab upwards at the back of the tongue: a wet poke at the roof of the mouth. A piquancy felt more than tasted, blood-red, wine-red, rose-red. Cayenne red, brick red, crimson, cerise, scarlet. Allen. Even his name tastes of red, the spicy kind; it leaves her mouth tingling.

He has nice hair, pretty to look at and soft to touch, like quicksilver slipping through your fingers, like filigrees of blood, chopped and trimmed. With the sun traipsing on the strands, it almost glows, as if it's set on fire, burning, an echo of his thoughts, perhaps. If her hand brushes even the tips, she knows she'd get burned. And she would deserve it.

An eye for an eye, they say. Allen, though, is different; give him an inch and he'd take one of your teeth as well, when you're not looking, and you'd thank him for it.

His head swivels and she starts, her face flushes; she's caught staring, how embarrassing.

Eat, he says again, his face still solemn, but his voice cheerier. She's stoked his ego by getting caught so enthralled by the sight of him. But then again, who wouldn't be? Such beauty in a man ought to be unfair. Right now the gleam in his eyes is that of a cat's about to purr. When in doubt, flatter.

She shrugs, picks on her meal.

All right, she says.

* * *

There's still a tangled mess on the center of his plate, a basil-green mound of jumbled pasta, but he doesn't touch it. He's staring down at the checked tablecloth, at a point to the left of his plate, as though counting the warped red-and-white squares. It's reflected on his glasses, that pattern, bulged in the middle and thinned to transparency.

He picks up the napkin from his lap and presses it to his mouth.

So what's the deal? he says.

The deal?

The reason. The why behind the big no. Why'd you refuse?

Why, indeed. That's what she asks herself every night, waddling in the blank space between pondering and falling asleep, in the curtained area where white noise begins to take its own shape. (Mostly it grows fingers, stubby ones, and spindly legs—or are they arms?) She would lie awake in her bed and count the yellow water-stains on ceiling, asking Why did I, Why did he, Why did it have to. The ceiling never answers back.

Yeah? he says. Go on. I'm listening.

He pushes his plate away, steeples his fingers under his chin, a ten-finger tent below the undressing gaze, still sharp, still a crisp blue, even behind the concave lenses. Red hair, blue eyes: something about that is bound to clash at some point. Two primary colors in tandem. It pins her down on her wooden chair and ties her tongue into a knot, ever tightening, ever shrinking. A deer caught in blue headlights, chatoyant headlights with the outer corners turned up.

They do not blink, those headlights.

She wets her lips: they're chafed, flaky, possibly cracked at the corners. A mouth the texture of rough paper, swabbed dry by a piercing stare that darts right through her own and into the space behind her forehead. Bull's-eye.

One red eyebrow goes up. Well? he says.

I—I don't know.

You don't know, he repeats. He says this with a downward inflection, with a tone of grim finality, like lights turned off, or a door shut. Storm clouds gather around his face, cumulonimbus ones, pulling his mouth corners down, tightening the skin around his eyes: the calm before the storm, so to speak, which isn't so calm after all. One more wrong answer and thunder will rumble, raindrops will fall, lightning will strike and hit her where it hurts the most. Burn, darling. Burn. Let's see how you like your meat charred.

One more chance, he says. Why?

His eyes are hard and polished, like rhinestones, glinting through the glasses where the light hits them. His cheeks are ruddy. That word, ruddy, is a plump two-syllable sound slapped on with broken rouge, blended in at the temples and wiped away, leaving only a trace behind. Red. She prefers flushed: there's a certain ring to it that draws her in—no, not a ring. A breathlessness, a sensation of free-falling, of hearing nothing but air rushing past: whoosh.

Like the old-fashioned ladies in black-and-white dresses, swooning over a man. You're falling, and there's no one below to catch you. Whoosh. And then splat.

The spoon in hand forgotten, she searches those rhinestone-eyes for the end of a rope, for multiple blankets knotted together and sent dangling out of a window, for anything to hold on to. Anything to fasten herself to, like an ankle is to a slug. There's something in there, somewhere, stirring behind the blinding blue, swinging, enticing, saying Grab on and climb. Don't let go.

Too bad doesn't find it. Neither does she find the words.

The next thing she knows is that tears are falling. This takes her by surprise: she's not emotionally unstable, and the urge to cry minutes before has already dissipated. But these tears, they're different. Not spawned of anger, or despair, or anguish; the opposite, in fact: she's crying because there's nothing else to do. The tears roll down on their own accord, pushed out by indifference, slowly, languorously, warm on her cheeks and heavy on her eyelashes. She feels unruffled, like a marble statue; no sobbing, no childish blubbering, as if she isn't even aware she's crying. If it weren't for the tears, she wouldn't be crying at all.

Hey, he says. Don't you make a scene. I'm not going to comfort you.

She wants to tell him it's all right, it's fine, she's crying because what else do you do when the words have run out, when you've been bled dry of reasons night after night, when you've reached the end of your wits and there's nothing else you could give? She wants to pat his head and tell him it's not his fault; it's her fault, she blames herself. Guilt, with its one eye between the floorboards, nods and grins.

She brings her fingers to her face, gapes at the dampness with an amused lift of the mouth. He's watching, now, his hands no longer tented, his brow creased.

I'm not really crying, she says.

Like hell, he says.

No, I mean I'm not crying because of anything. I'm crying because of nothing.

She laughs, as if to prove a point. It comes out warbled.

Somehow he accepts this reason, the way a parent accepts a recalcitrant daughter. It makes no sense, as far as sense goes, yet he chooses not to question: he relents, he leans back into his chair, drapes his arm over the backrest. Stares out the window again, at the bird-dropping clouds that have morphed into something else: the same substance in a different mold. She's suspicious of these clouds. Their edges are too clear, too defined, that they may as well be stenciled on the sky, spray-painted and dissolved, smudged by an invisible wrist.

Like a painting, she thinks. She could be a painting: a portrait done in soft pastels, or egg tempera, or acrylic, for a modern edge, with a fruit-laden basket in her hands and a toothpaste-ad smile on her face. Bounty of the Earth. The Reaping. Or simply Untitled.

The world itself could be a painting, a triptych, or a hazy fresco on a curved wall, a masterpiece that comes alive every time no one's watching. That would explain how blurry things seem, sometimes, and how undefined faces are, especially during the transitional moments between today and tomorrow. Also the unshakable feeling of having eyes trained at the back of your neck, even when you're alone in your room and the door is locked. Propped up on a gallery, admired by bespectacled men and women in various hats and dark turtlenecks: Look, they would say. This one's about to open her mail. And this one's getting ready for bed.

The tears stop falling as abruptly as they came. She rubs at her cheeks with the back of her hand.

I'm sorry, she says. I shouldn't have—I was nervous. Back then, I mean. I didn't know what to do.

Nervous, he says to the window, mocking. How do you think I felt? You left me by the pond like a dimwit.

Guilt stabs at her stomach and crosses its hairless arms, and she knows why. He's skirting the prosaic, edging away from the blunt statement. What he's trying to say is that he's not immune to pain, that he was hurt—still is—and it's because of her. She knows him well enough to discern the things he doesn't say: often the spaces between the words weigh more than the words themselves. They hover in the background, mere outlines with transparent bellies, giving voice to the voiceless. You can hear them if you listen hard enough, if you hold your tongue and put your ear against the blanks, against the flat silences and sidestepped areas.

Every silence is full. There is no such thing as empty silence over the dinner table.

I'm sorry, she says, again. If I could do everything over I would have done things differently.

But you can't.

Can't what? Do things differently?

No. You can't do everything over.

* * *

They walk home in silence, the haunting kind; the air around their ears is brimming with the unspoken: the invisible, voiceless witnesses suspended on word-strings, unpainted marionettes waiting for fingers to give them a life of their own. The sun begins its descent to the west, with the mountain-bulged horizon waiting for it with open fields and yellowed grass. The sky seems lower, closer, a little less open, a little less flat. Maybe the sky also sets when nighttime comes, drifting down to earth, if only to plant a kiss on the tops of trees.

A goodnight kiss from heaven itself. What more can anything wish for? Sun-kissed, heaven-kissed. Next comes moon-hugged, or star-fondled.

She stops at her front door, turns back to look at him. He's standing with his hands in his pockets, regarding her with a level gaze more unnerving than a glare. If he would only take his glasses off—no. A naked stare bores deeper, prods further, and who knows what he'd see in her eyes? The wind blows: it's cooler than the ones at noon, but still warm, and laden with dust.

Allen, she says.

He grunts. She doesn't like grunts; they could mean anything.

Thanks for today. And I'm sorry.

A negligent lift of the shoulders, an ambiguous tip of the head.

I…I love you, she says, hurriedly, afraid of tripping over the words. She hesitates, and adds: Goodnight.

He blinks, leisurely, as though bored. 'Night, he says.

She stands on her toes, kisses his cheek, flees inside the house and closes the door in his face. All night long she cannot shake the feeling that she has ended something without knowing it.

* * *

**Disclaimer: **I own a pair of jeans with a tag that says Live's stitched onto the back pocket. Yes: Live's, not Levi's. Harvest Moon? Still don't own it.

* * *

_**a/n:**_

_So there's a second chapter in which nothing happens. There's also a third one that I haven't started on yet because I have no idea what to do with it, but I draw the line at third. Three chapters. No more, no less. 'Tis I swear._

_Also, I took liberties in redesigning the interior of Chez Clement. Tiled floors just don't cut it for me._

_Oh, and my monitor's back to its normal, boring self now. Turns out it stops being happy if you hit it hard enough. (I think the same principle applies to people.)_

_Thank you so much for reading! Reviews are demanded. Wait, did I say demanded? I meant appreciated. Wait, not intense enough. Let me type it in all caps so it's properly Luke-ified: REVIEWS ARE APPRECIATED. Really, though, thanks so much for reading. :D_


	3. III

**Invulnerable**

III

* * *

"_There are things that have to be forgotten if you want to go on living_."

― Jim Thompson, _The Killer Inside Me_

* * *

"What do you do when you can't go on?"

"Fake it."

"Until what?"

"Until you've had enough of trying to convince yourself."

* * *

He dreams that he's the sky. Kneaded and flattened out, knuckled higher, either blue or gray, or both. Dusty and gritty and opened wide. Tossed up, like pizza dough. Stretched out all around the world, close to tearing, bodiless, limbless, floating or falling up. Bird's-eye view: what the Goddess sees outside her window. Blurred, like fogged-over glass, fading at the edges where contours meet and overlap. Colored smudges below, green and brown and sometimes blue. The earth in the raw. A naked planet wrapped with a towel. Flocks of bird flying by, gliding on feathered wings, shadows on unbroken meadows. Ravens, crows, jackdaws, cawing and shrieking. All of them black. Clouds sailing past, snowy ones and ashen ones, shaped like women.

Women?

He stares harder: they are women, after all. Airborne women with their heads on backwards.

One of the women stops, tilts her face up. She wears a checked tablecloth; it billows in the wind, a red-and-white flag. Fire and ice. Her face seems familiar, like a fractured memory glued together, sewn together wrong. Features mismatched, coming undone. Unfurling. Pull the thread and she'd fall apart, nose first, mouth second. Her eyes are blue-gray.

She smiles, waves her checkered hand, she dives—no, she falls, and he doesn't catch her. He can't; he doesn't have arms. Someone screams. (Is it him or her? Or both? Skies don't have mouths.) She grows smaller and smaller, closer and closer to the ground, and he watches with helpless fascination. Whoosh, she goes; thud, she goes. That's her body far below, broken, bent at grisly angles. No blood.

He wakes up.

The damp sheets have wound their way around his legs, over and under and between. Sweat trickles down his brow and stings his eye. Time, what time: the bedside clock says 5:45 am. He curses, falls back down on the pillows. Too early, much too early. The sky outside is a domed ultramarine. Pitched clouds, crisp, low on the horizon. Like shiny patches on old tweed pants. A sky that promises green grass speckled with flowers, a yellow-crayon sun on one corner, with dots for eyes and a curved line for a mouth.

Unfortunate. He's too old to trust whatever the sky tries to promise. Sooner and later it will rain, the flowers will wilt, and the sun won't be smiling.

He yawns, stretches, kicks the covers away. Already the dream is fading, dissolving into reality. Whittled down into scattered remnants, splintered dregs lingering in the air. What remains is a sensation of helplessness. A rigidity of the jaw. Like watching someone die. Did someone die? He can't remember, not anymore. Dreams do not mean anything. Nightmares do, in the morning, after enough pondering. Dreams do not, so he shrugs and leaves it be. He thinks he can still smell it, that dream: it smells like stars. Hair bleach, hydrogen peroxide.

He tries to sleep again. Sleep evades him.

* * *

The pond lies flat on its basin. He sees himself reflected in the surface, a reversed version of him below the water, looking up. Disheveled, underdressed. Rugged, if he's generous: the king in his polka-dot pajamas, without his crown and scepter. Stripped of gold and layers of silk, barely a man. Barely awake. The great bastard himself, in flesh, come to drown, to sever his breath. Bury himself in a watery grave. Hah, no. Why rid the world of a blessing? Besides, he can swim.

He doesn't like this place. Too bright, too cheerful. Too much color gathered in one place. Nauseatingly vibrant. Colors yanked from the opposite sides of the spectrum and brought together and tamped down into the grass and engraved into the motley soil. Laved by crystal waters. The Goddess' own tears. Or saliva.

This early in the morning, the light is thin and clear and falls in freckled slats. Bluish, too: the same texture as the air, the same smell, and about the same color. Possibly the light and air are one: you breathe both and exhale both, only the air is cooler, lighter. A little softer. A little suffocating, if you breathe in too deeply, or breathe out too much. A slice of going under. Tap death on the shoulder and run. Bubbles on the surface of the water.

He misses her. The tangled laughter, the blue eyes that are more gray than blue. The rough man-hands. Maybe she misses him, too, maybe she detests him, always hard to tell with women. Love, after all, is too strong an emotion to carve neatly in two; unlike joy or anger, love does not discriminate: you can love a person you hate, or hate a person you love. Complicated thing, love, when it ought to be simple.

Love should be packaged in a cardboard box. Giftwrapped, doled out, given away by hand, one by one, so the message is clear and easily reciprocated. One for you because I love you, one for me because I love myself too, and one for the little boy who lives down the lane.

Birds up in the branches. Birds, again: he remembers part of his dream. Hazy, like the moment before falling asleep. Ravens and crows and jackdaws. Caws and shrieks. Blue jays, these ones, blue and black, like twittering bruises, white-chested bruises. Trees in bloom, flowers on the grass, birdsong from above. A fine, misty morning. He hates all of it: Everything else has no right to act cheerful when he himself is not.

Oh, drown me, he thinks. Hold my head underwater and don't let go until I stop breathing.

* * *

Footsteps patter behind him, hesitant ones, slowing down as they draw nearer. A shuffling of feet, a suppressed sigh. The swish of cloth rubbing against cloth. The sound of fidgeting: the sound of indecision. He doesn't even bother turning around, he knows it's her, knows it by heart; somehow he knows by instinct, as though her footsteps have a voice of their own. A secret song of the feet, the crunch of gravel under rubber soles.

She's behind him, now, a little to the left. He hears her breathing.

So near and yet so far: Only now does he realize what the phrase means. To have something within reach, but not the ability to grab it. As though she's made of snow, and he of fire: Touch her and she melts, touch her and lose her, watch her spill into a wet puddle on the ground. As though she's a ghost, a specter, the memory of a distant dream, dissipating at a blink of the eye. A mirage that blows away with the wind. A note written on the sand.

She clears her throat; he ignores her.

Allen, she says.

Don't you have something important to do?

No, not yet. Somehow I thought I'd find you here.

So you're psychic now, princess?

With a measure of hesitation bordering on shyness, she steps closer, stands next to him. Now he can see her: all hail the beautiful princess, in her favorite overalls and leather boots, as rumpled and bedraggled as he. Exhaustion shows in the rounded slump of her shoulders, in the slothful half-blinks of her eyelids. She sighs, gives him a sideways glance, as if meeting his eyes would burn her. There's always that possibility.

You're up early, she says.

Aren't you the master of the obvious.

Anything wrong?

Isn't there always?

They stand side by side under a cloud of quiet consternation. Any moment now and the cloud would cry and pelt them with rain. Locusts falling from the sky. Or knives, to make it easier. Slash us, kills us. Make it dramatic. Hit us in the heart, where it hurts the most. Ooh, shocking. He brings a fist to his mouth and yawns.

She has something in her hand; he catches a glimpse of it, dark blue and fleeting. Her elbow obstructs his view of it, whatever the thing is. She toys with it, fiddles with the edges, and—by Goddess, there it is again, he can see it this time, and he doesn't doubt what it is. Something cold and bitter slithers down his throat, settles into his stomach where it writhes and foams at the mouth.

What makes you think I'd even accept that? he says.

She purses her lips, tries to hide the crestfallen expression that puckers her face. Opens her mouth and closes it, her cheeks coloring: cadaverous, in the blue light and blue air. Like someone drowning, whose throat is filled with water, whose eyes are blank and glassy, whose finger-ends are stiff and soggy-wrinkled. He kicks a stone into the pond; it makes a small plop and disappears, leaving concentric circles behind.

What are we, exactly? she says. You tell me.

She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and waits for an answer, traps him with a blue-gray stare. Like a statement that ends with a dot, like a noose knotted, like frost on a winter eve. He remembers her tears: limpid beads running down, dribbling down, leaving a gleaming streak on the dappled cheeks. Splashing onto the tablecloth. There you go, the stars would say. Wish granted. Happy now?

He decides no, he's not. Birds chirrup; he shifts his weight on one foot, rakes his hair with his hand.

I'll tell you what we're not, he says. I'm not a shoulder to cry on. I'm not your friend, I'm not your confidante. I'm not your rock, or your anchor, or your knight in shining armor. It just so happens that I'm in love with you and you're in love with me. That's all we are.

Her eyes avoid his. In her hand the feather lies crushed, dampened at the tips. Not the best thing to propose with.

She says, Just two people in love, huh? She attempts to laugh and fails. Poor us.

We could do worse.

He leans forward, closes the gap between their faces, brushes his mouth to her ear. She goes still; she's holding her breath. She smells of morning dew and the musty, slept-in pong of stale bed sheets. I don't even like you, he whispers. He feels her shiver.

You don't like me, she says breathily, but you love me?

There's a fine line between extreme dislike and love, darling, and you are that line.

He pulls away, gives her a detached smile. This close to her, he sees her lower lip trembling. Possibly more in anger than in aching. Her hair hangs flaccid around her face, uncombed, snakelike. Waiflike. He resists the urge to straighten it, to run his fingers through it: he's not here on business. Must act professional and all that. Damn you, Rio. You and your unruly hair.

She sniffs, but she doesn't cry.

Sometimes, she says, I forget you're also human.

Even I forget. You always remind me, though.

They slide into a moment of blankness, where silence reigns and voices falter. What else is there to say? They are past the point of explanations and tearful apologies. Past scathing witticisms and wavering pretenses, heading straight into a tunnel with no light at the end. Not the buttoned-up chop of a period. Not the diffident skid-pause of a comma, not the drawn-out puzzle of a question mark. A colon, yes, or an ellipsis: something that says It's not the end yet, watch, there's more to follow.

Stay tuned. Wait for it. Keep waiting. Tick-tock, tick-tock. He thinks time doesn't sound like a clock: time sounds like running water, from a tap. Not cold, harsh ticks, like frozen water-pellets hitting roof tiles. Soft, smooth, flowing. You never realize time is running out, slipping past, sidestepping you, slinking away. Eddies swirling, going down the drain. Trickling: drip, drip, drip. Running away, always away.

Never coming back.

* * *

I don't know how else to say sorry.

Then don't say it.

He's on a precipice. Standing on the edge, teetering. Swaying back and forth. On the verge of something he doesn't know, doesn't understand. Black ahead, black behind. At the bottom something waits with its mouth open. One shove and he'll fall. Into what? A boundless pit, a new sky. Another life. He has to make a choice, it seems. Red or blue, coffee or tea, glasses or contacts. Stay or jump. Forgive or forget.

I love you, she says.

I know.

I miss you.

I know.

There's no one else. I was just flustered, that's why I—

I know, Rio. I know.

Allen…

She sounds as if she's about to cry. He's guilty, plain and simple. Guilty of drawing the feud out, dragging it out like a pool of rainwater. Smeared feelings, hurt. Bruised. Dark purple, yellowing at the edges. And for what? A pathetic stab at revenge?

How far will you go, he says, for forgiveness?

As far as necessary, she says. But not so far that I get lost.

He laughs. A dry, strident noise. A laughter that says You're an idiot. She steps closer to the pond, leans forward. A shove and she'll fall in. His arm tingles but he doesn't push her. The Goddess pond where the Goddess lives or tries to live. Why a pond? Why not a mortared castle with turrets and ramparts, soot-stained parapets and waterlogged drawbridge, a fortress where deities ought to live? Shoo, dear Goddess. Scram. Leave the world of mortals and save yourself while you still can. Go home, wherever your home is.

I don't want to go on like this, she says. Either we are or we're not. What are we?

Victims of pride, he says.

Your pride, you mean.

Maybe.

A weakness, that's what it is. Vanity. A strength and a weakness both. She wrenched his pride open when she turned him down, held it by the tongue and squeezed. It bled and bled dark red blood, ran into a wet patch thick and glossy. Liver-colored. It's still bleeding. Now he's sore and sulking like a baby, a poor wittle baby sucking his poor wittle thumb.

When will the poor wittle baby grow up? When the mirror cracks and the man in it has half a face, half a smile. When vanity looks out to the world from within sunken eyes that roll upwards. When the mouth that smiles starts concealing crooked teeth and bleeding gums inside. When red hair turns white. When the sun is charred black and the stars are eyeless children that visit every night, when rules are no longer rules and the sky turns rosy and the grass purple, when nothing makes sense anymore, and by then it's too late.

But he's overreacting, and even he knows that.

Guilt, she says, is not a pleasant feeling.

Would you rather feel pain?

Pain, yes. Closure. Love.

I feel love now but it doesn't make me happy.

No, it doesn't.

It used to.

I know.

Sunlight bounces off the pond like embers rising from a bonfire. Red stars gliding up and disappearing. Like dying fireflies. Light dancing on her face, golden light thin and watery. The blue in the air dissolves. Light and air breaking apart. No longer suffocating: He breathes easier, inhales air and exhales air. The way it should be. She closes her hand on the feather and idly twirls it.

He's lived with his pride as a symbiotic parasite but now it's time to part ways, just for the moment. Otherwise he's bound to lose something else that weighs more and matters more. Something that needs to pay more attention to her hair. Here we are, he thinks. Good old pride. Time for me to swallow you whole.

In the times before, he wouldn't even think of relenting. Let the women cry for him, let them pine and waste their time dreaming up an ending that won't hurt. Dreaming up a scene in which the view is his face instead of his back walking away. But that was long ago. Rejection does things to people, and so does love.

How far would you have me go, she says, for your forgiveness?

As far as necessary. But not so far that I'd lose you.

Oh? Seems like I'd get lost anyway.

Abruptly he grabs her hand and pulls her against him, takes hold of her chin and turns her face up towards his. His other hand on her arm, gripping. Claw-like. She breathes in ragged gasps. Puffs of warm air curling on his face. Moist. She blinks, wets her lips, blinks again.

Allen—

What will you do, he says, if I kissed you right now?

She flushes a delightful shade of pink.

I—well, I don't know, for heaven's sake. I guess… I guess I'd give you this.

She holds out her hand and the blue feather in it. Twisted, dank, wilting. Ugly thing. And yet he takes it, crams it in his pocket and grins. Unorthodox, the woman proposing to the man. But who cares. He's swallowed his pride and it tasted good. It tasted of sweet things, forgotten things. Of an egg-sun rising from the horizon. Of a new beginning.

I accept your proposal, he says. Pauses, and adds: Grudgingly.

She frowns. A hopeful frown, anxious. A frayed crease between brown-blond eyebrows. A slant of the mouth, fine lines branching out of eye-corners. Fair strands falling around her face, like starched curtains shredded and torn.

Are you sure? she says. You changed your mind pretty quickly.

He shrugs, holds her closer. Goddess, how he missed her. To have her now within the circle of his arms, without acerbic words and cut-off sentences, is heaven in its own right. Just him and her and a momentous hush. Water rippling. Leaves rustling. Two people breathing.

A broken skyline to the west. Reeds and bulrushes shooting up by their feet, around the pond. Water lapping at the edges of the basin like shapeless fingers caressing the slope. Wetting the earth. Still he holds her and holds her and says nothing. Her small hands rough and calloused resting on his back, creeping up, down, tracing patterns. Her face is pressed to his neck and her eyelashes brush his throat whenever she blinks. It tickles.

She blinks, again, slowly.

So we're good? she says. Just like that? After all that drama?

Rather unceremonious, isn't it?

It is. But it's okay. I don't mind. But—

She lifts her head and stares at him.

Aren't you going to kiss me? she says.

He laughs, lets go of her and walks away. She jogs by him and tries to keep pace.

Save it for the wedding, he says.

They walk home together and leave the pond behind, with its trees and birds and bulrushes and reeds. His hands in his pockets, taking one step at a time. Flattened grass underfoot. With her walking beside him. And all around is the invisible silence heard by those who listen with their hearts open and their eyes closed.

* * *

"_To love is to be vulnerable_."

— C.S. Lewis

* * *

**Disclaimer: **I don't own Allen, which is too bad because I'd really like to do things to him. Various K- to T-rated things. I also don't own Harvest Moon, which is okay because Harvest Moon isn't a gorgeous redhead and I'm not really attracted to it that much.

* * *

_**a/n:**_

_Aaaaaaand that's the end of that. Pretty anticlimactic, eh? Sorry it took so long to update (Got distracted by LoL's Ezreal and his TPA skin *drools* and a lot of other things I fangirl, you know, like Mikhail and Ivan and Amir, oh, and Will too, sometimes), and sorry if it makes no sense or feels rushed. I'm just so drained right now. Completely out of ideas. Confused. Speaking in fragments._

_I try to keep my style constant, but I tend to get influenced by whatever book I'm currently reading, which, in this case, is _The Remains of the Day _by Kazuo Ishiguro. It's written so ornately that in fear of accidentally emulating it, I overcompensated in this chapter by being too curt. Too bland. Too fragmentary._

_Anyhow, what's done is done. Thank you so much for reading! And thank you for your kind reviews. Thank you so, so much. I can't say it enough._


End file.
